


bottled up the world where i used to dream

by ZenzaNightwing



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (hits the ground in a dead faint), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Canon Divergence - Episode: s01e18 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, Caretaking, Catatonia, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eye Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, Juno-typical depression, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, Self-Indulgent, Touch-Starved, Trauma, juno steel: check this out, sarah steel turn on your location I just want to talk, the canon stuff basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23411944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaNightwing/pseuds/ZenzaNightwing
Summary: Juno Steel is many things: an excellent Private Eye, an amazing shot, one hell of a lady, deeply depressed, intensely traumatized, in love with Peter Nureyev-Here's one thing he's not right now: conscious.(AKA Juno falls into a quick trauma coma before he can skip out on Nureyev. What happens next may shock you.)
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Rita, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 79
Kudos: 567





	bottled up the world where i used to dream

**Author's Note:**

> Title from One More Thrill by KOLARS

Admittedly, Juno probably should have expected something like this. But then again, it’s not like he doesn’t have a very long, extensive, and rich history of ignoring his own pain and making bad decisions. While both technically count as separate histories, they overlap so much that it just fits under one umbrella category of ‘Things I Do That Would Disappoint Benten’.

To be fair, he started expecting it- oh, what, a week ago? (More? Probably more.) When he had to stop someone from assassinating him in a hotel room, and then jumped out of a moving car, and then was held hostage on the train he was going to rob, and then inhaled a _lot_ of mysterious gas, and then, oh, y’know, threatened his own suicide to stop an evil anthropologist from killing Nureyev and _meant it._

A fun- what, four hours?

Good times. Good times.

But anyway, it was somewhere in between any one of those fun events that Juno slowly became aware of the fact that he was going to break.

Not break, like a two-bit con in an HCPD holding cell, who leak information everywhere while blubbering and pleading, or like a jilted lover in one of Rita’s streams, who scream bitter words and wield kitchen knives in a frenzy, or like a damsel in one of Benzaiten’s poems, who dramatically swoon and sob into the shoulder of the nearest knight, or like Cecil Kanagawa, who starts laughing and sobbing at the same time until he’s a manic mess of tears and sound. Not like Juno’s nose or the tumbler of whiskey his mom liked to hurl at the wall.

Break, as in pass out, and wake up a little later feeling out of his body and floating somewhere in between panic and pain and shame with everything from the outside world blurring together. Repeat, as necessary. Just a slip in his existence, a dark spot for where he should be awake and aware slipping right past him. When the strain and stress just build and build, once the adrenaline is gone and he is left with his own thoughts in a place his head deems safe enough, it strikes. The worse he feels beforehand, the longer it takes him to shake it off.

He’s pretty sure the breaks aren’t normal. Hell, they might even be unique, since he hasn’t heard Rita wax poetic about anything like it from one of her streams. It’s another reason on top of his other thousand he doesn’t want to go to therapy, and another reason on top of a million others that he probably should.

He had one episode as a kid, and he came out of it with a lot of bruises and a broken finger when Sarah tried to beat him out of it.

After that, he got a lot better about realizing when one was about to come on, and a lot better at finding a hiding place beforehand. Like Sasha’s house, or a clean, dark, defensible part of the sewers. Touch tended to help him out of it easier. He’d come out of it sometimes, with Sasha’s hand in his hair as she did her calculus homework with the other, or with a small pile of rabbits weighing his lap down. His head was always a little less fuzzy and violated after that.

Once he got old enough, his apartment was a godsend for hiding away, even though it was a lot lonelier. Sometimes he could even have a break episode on his bed and not wake up with a backache in addition to the hollowed out, dead sensation that always followed the lonely breaks, now that he was old enough for the rabbits to see him as a threat and Sasha had escaped the second she had the option.

They got… a lot worse. After Benten. He had to give more excuses as to why he was gone for hours at a time and showed back up looking like hell itself, and it was harder to make those and not imagine what else he could do in that time, given a big enough height, a sharp enough knife, a full enough medicine cabinet, or a nice enough blaster.

Rita caught him a couple of times, right before or in the middle of a break, when he couldn’t make up a good enough excuse as to why he’d be absent, or couldn’t get to his apartment in time and had an episode right in the office. After he spilled the beans, she asked him to make sure he told her whenever he had an episode coming on so she could help. Unfortunately, whatever blurry impressions she leaves are too close to his mother to make Juno comfortable with letting her touch him, so her support is mostly in the form of soup and blankets and cleaning the dirt and grime from his skin.

The breaks aren’t that big of a deal. Or, at least, he tells himself that. It’s not a problem that he’s spent whole days locked up in his own head. That the first time after Benten died, he probably would’ve died of dehydration if Rita hadn’t come to check up on him.

It’s not a problem. Juno is fine.

But, regardless, it was sometime between waking up in a resort bed with someone about to kill him and pressing his own blaster to his skull that he thought, _well, this will probably take a couple hours to break through, huh?_

As everything kept wracking up, so did his estimated time for his break.

But he couldn’t afford weakness. Not while he sat in the backseat of the RUBY7 with the understanding that the pill he ate and his own consciousness are the two things keeping Nureyev alive next to him. Or later, when he let out choked screams of pain and blood ran from his eye and nose and his skull felt like it is going to burst apart and leave him scattered in pieces, because then Miasma might do even worse than his mom to get him out of his trance, or she could kill Nureyev, or-

Weakness was not an option.

More than that, though, it was a point of pride.

He _hates_ when he breaks. He hates the gummy, raspy feeling inside his skull afterward, hates the half-formed tear tracks that carve lines of stiff salt down his face. He hates the helplessness of it. Hates the memory of broken bones and purpled skin.

He hates that he can’t do anything when he breaks. That he’s just stuck inside of his own skin, too numb to recognize anything. That he is useless.

So, once Nureyev left, and the only person in danger was Juno, he still refused to break outright. It could’ve just been the adrenaline that never left him, but he liked to hold onto the only illusion of control he really had right then.

He did lose a few hours sometimes, but it could’ve just been the bloodloss. He definitely didn’t feel safe enough to break fully. It wasn’t like he could tell, and it’s not like Miasma cared enough to tell him, or to even recognize what was happening. All she cared about is the _thing_ behind his eye socket.

And then, of course, Juno lost an eye. And Juno closed a door. And Juno made a wishful promise he half-meant. And Juno did his best to commit the most heroic suicide he could.

It didn’t stick. It ran right through his shaking, scarred fingertips like rainwater, and sunk into the godforsaken Martian soil with whatever remained of the thing that used to be a highly respected and remarkably insane anthropologist.

And Juno _wanted_ to break, in that moment. With Nureyev still waiting behind the door, with an audience of nothing but a superweapon, he wanted to just shut down and let the desert decide if he died wrapped up in his own head or not.

But he had spent all of his time in that room fighting for his life, and the adrenaline still crept through him, and the blood was hot and sticky and sick against his skin. His body would not give him the privilege to quietly destroy himself.

He blanked a little bit on the ride back to Hyperion, but again, probably the bloodloss. Hyperion, because if he kept delaying the break, then he didn’t know how long the episode would last.

But… Nureyev could have that one night.

Juno could hold out for that long. He’s selfish like that.

Because he wants Nureyev, or Rose, or Glass, or Ransom, or whatever name he decides to smile that sharp-toothed grin under. He wants the long-limbed creature painted in red, with an infinitely gentle and deadly touch.

He wants to love him without saying it, because that means it can be stolen from him. And Nureyev is nothing but a thief.

Juno wants to have this, without his broken brain in the way.

That one night. That last night.

Before Nureyev realizes that Juno is far too broken. Before whatever temporary beauty Nureyev saw in him is wiped clean and Nureyev leaves to find somewhere better. Someone better.

Juno would just break Nureyev, anyway. He would destroy everything. He always does.

He made Nureyev wait outside, and wasn’t surprised when the doctor took one look at him, face still covered in blood residue, and informed him that his eye was a lost cause, and then took out the tweezers and half-heartedly offered some light painkillers. Juno refused them.

This is Hyperion City, after all. The doctor had nine patients with knife wounds waiting in the next few rooms. Juno could take some more pain.

Besides, he got a fun gauze eyepatch afterward.

Yay.

And then there was-

There was the night. The night he wanted. The night in which he didn’t wince at all whenever Nureyev grazed or pressed on the bruises on his skin, just in case it would worry him. When he let Nureyev touch him with a reserved tenderness that he doesn’t deserve.

When he felt so strangely loved that it hurt more than the ache in his head and the dark bruises hidden under the cover of darkness.

“You know, Juno,” Nureyev said sleepily, his fingers skimming over the pillowcase to graze Juno’s hair without purpose, “call me a fool if you like, but I think I may have fallen in love with you.”

Oh.

Ok.

Oh god.

Fuck.

Juno wants to say it back, he does. He wants to scream it from the rooftops and paint it in his own blood and write it in the stars.

“If you’re a fool, that makes two of us,” he said, instead. Because he was going to make the dumbest decision of his life once he could actually muster up the strength to get up from that bed.

He stayed awake. God, he needed sleep. He needed more than whatever few hours he’d scrounged over the past week or so. More than falling unconscious once his wounds caught up with him.

But he couldn’t sleep, because what if he felt too safe? What if he broke right then and there?

His eye burned with exhaustion, and he ached, and he ached, in the best and worst possible way, laying in bed with the thief who stole his heart.

Still, he waited, and he watched, and he listened, and he drank in and memorized everything he could.

And eventually, he forced himself up and bit back any hiss of pain. He got dressed again, feeling the heavy lethargy take him over as he moved to obey the siren’s call to- to the office. He had to go to the office. Rita would find him, then.

But he couldn’t stop himself from looking back, right before he opened the door, to where the Martian dawn through the blinds lit Nureyev in gentle slats of pale blue. He was smiling, softly. Happily. Barely awake, likely courtesy of the shift of weight on the bed.

The wave of affection came over him with a startling clarity to it.

And he wanted to run with Peter Nureyev wherever the solar winds took him. He wanted to cheat death with him. To take down cities with him.

And he also wanted to stay here, in this city that sings of sewer water and blood and corruption. Stay here and build a life with whatever name Nureyev wanted to wear next and make sure he had the space to stretch his wings.

For one brief moment, Juno felt so _safe,_ standing by a man that had Juno’s heart in his custody and seemed determined to replace the stolen possession with his own.

In another life, this thought is very quickly followed by deep guilt.

In this life, that thought doesn’t get a chance to surface.

Because, of course, that’s when the dim light of dawn in the room starts to fade at the edges.

And that’s when Juno realized he should’ve expected this.

Because of course, Nureyev could make him feel so safe he could break, right as he was supposed to leave.

Of course.

How could Juno even think any differently?

That nearly thirty years of finding dark, safe, private, familiar corners could lead to him breaking in the middle of a dubiously hygienic Hyperion City hotel room, because there’s a man he recently watched murder his pseudo-father with a knife in the bed he’s just left.

Of course.

With whatever last threads of bare consciousness he’s been allowed, Juno tries his best to speak. “Nureyev, call Rita.”

And then everything goes black.

-

Peter wakes up a little bit when the weight on the bed shifts. Not enough to actually be conscious of anything but the fact that he’s unconscious, but it’s something. The sound of cloth rustling drags him a little bit further toward the waking realm, and the footsteps that follow.

Now, normally Peter would be downright _delighted_ to wake up to the sound of Juno Steel’s voice. Absolutely ecstatic. Thrilled beyond measure.

The problem is, the words Juno speaks are very much strangled, a tad rough, and incredibly pained.

And, of course, punctuated with the sound of a body thudding gracelessly against the floor.

Nothing like a threat against the people that Peter cares for to wake him up in the morning.

“Juno?” Peter calls, bolting upright and unfurling off of the bed, grabbing one of his knives from his discarded boots and crouching. The door is shut, and locked. No sign of a forced entry.

Juno doesn’t respond.

Peter peeks his head above the mattress. It’s empty. Juno’s gone.

They have fantastically bad luck when it comes to hotel rooms.

Peter flips the grip on his knife and slinks carefully forward, scanning the room as he goes.

All of his grace goes out the window the second he finds Juno, collapsed like a broken doll by the foot of the bed. He scrambles forward, shoves the knife between his teeth and uses both hands to turn Juno over. He scrabbles to find a pulse, his other hand rising to make sure Juno is still breathing. He confirms both, and his fingertips ache to scramble over and find whatever happened and _fix it-_

But there’s nothing different from last night. No head wound, no massive leakage of blood, no distinctive pill residue, no needle mark, nothing that would knock the Detective out this badly, except-

Intense sleep deprivation. Oh, Juno.

Or, possibly an intruder. But, knowing Juno, it’s the former.

That impossible idiot. He doesn’t know how to take care of himself.

Peter sighs through the knife and lifts Juno into his arms and back onto the bed. He goes… easier, than he should. Peter tried to be light last night, to be gentle, but he still felt the press of Juno’s ribs. Miasma didn’t care much for their hunger, and Juno never got the reprieve that Peter did, all while expending so much energy.

Peter would love to kill Miasma again. To watch her scream and spit and suffer, for all that she put Juno through.

But she is dead, and the past is of the past, and he will just have to be content with the fact that she will never lay a hand, or whatever other appendage she opts to grow, on Juno Steel ever again.

Peter situates Juno back on the bed, and puts his own pants back on, before picking his knife out from between his teeth and sweeping the room thoroughly. Only once that is done does Peter let himself sidle back into the bed and consider everything again.

Evidence thus far: Juno is thin, hasn’t eaten in a very long while, and has gone through a lot, even by his standards, in the past two weeks. Juno is deeply unconscious enough not to stir from being manhandled onto the bed, or from hitting the floor.

Peter takes a quick break from his dissection of the current situation to check for a concussion. Luckily, the carpet here, despite being deeply grimy, is thick and soft enough to cushion the fall. But Juno doesn’t wake up when Peter shines the pen light in his- well, eye.

Back to the evidence: Juno is wearing all of his clothes again, shoes included, although they seem to be on the wrong feet, and his shirt is inside out. He isn’t bleeding freshly from anywhere, his eye patch hasn’t gotten any more blood on it. He has dark circles that would make a black hole jealous and his face is completely slack.

More points in the ‘complete exhaustion’ category. The clothes, though… likely the product of some strange, loopy concept that came barreling into Juno’s head at whatever godforsaken hour it is on this planet.

At least, he hopes it’s that. He hopes very much. He doesn’t like to think about the second option, but he will if he has to.

Oh! Likely going to see his partner in- well, not crime, but given her various hacking exploits, not technically incorrect, Miss Rita. It would explain why he asked for her- oh, yes. Juno hadn’t felt up to giving a comms call, but had wanted to tell her to pack up the office and likely let her know he was even alive.

Well, poor execution, dear Detective, but excellent concept.

Peter searches back in his memory to find Rita’s comms number, and dials it. Let’s see… Mr. Morales will do just fine.

Rita picks up almost immediately. “This is Rita! I don’t know your number! Who are you!”

“Hello, Rita,” Christopher says, his voice pitched lower and rougher than it is when he is Peter. “My name is Mr. Morales-”

“Oh, so you’re both Glass _and_ the man that doesn’t exist! Where are ya keepin’ Mistah Steel?”

Christopher - Rex? He’ll work it out somewhere along the line - blinks. “What?”

“I hacked the camera footage from around Mistah Steel’s apartment, and he left with somebody that looked an awful lot like you, Mistah Glass. Then he checked into a clinic a little while ago, and someone in the waiting room posted a photo that has someone looking just like you too. So where is he?”

“Oh. Ok.” He mentally bumps Rita up on his internal scales for danger. “Well, the Detective is alive, although that was in question a few times. I believe he has more details to communicate but he is currently very unconscious and I don’t think it’s wise to wake him-”

Rita interrupts again, but her voice is significantly more serious. “Mistah Morales, you gotta tell it to me straight, and no fibbin’, alright?” She doesn’t wait for a response. “Are you in the room with him right now, talking at this volume?”

“...Yes? I’m sitting next to him.”

“And he isn’t awake?”

“No. I did tell you he was asleep, correct?”

“You need to tell me where you are right now, Mistah, or I will make your life a living hell.” There’s the quick and precise sound of swift footsteps, paired with the jingling of some keys. “Actually, scratch that. You did kidnap him from his place, so you know where his apartment is. You are going to bring Mistah Steel back home right now, or I will make you wish you never set foot on this planet.”

Now, this is exactly when the panic from before comes rising slowly back. “Miss Rita,” Peter - no, damn it, which identity should he even use for this? - says, “Juno has been through a lot the past couple of days, and I am not inclined to move him anywhere without his permission.”

“Then you’d better be prepared for a long haul wherever you are, because Mistah Steel doesn’t do stress good. I’ve got the supplies to help at his apartment. Set ‘em all up while he was gone. How bad was it? What happened?”

Peter scoots closer to Juno, and shifts his hand to intertwine his fingers with Juno’s slack hand. “Very. I- I don’t even know all of the details, but he has been held captive by a mad scientist for almost two weeks. And… other associated things. He no longer has one of his eyes.”

Rita drags in a heavy breath that could be a gasp or an attempt at calming herself. “Mistah Glass, Morales, Shah, and whatever other name you’re using these days, you bring him to his apartment right now, or I swear I will-”

“Yes, yes, a threat of vague and yet specific wrath upon my head, I get the gist.” He doesn’t like that she knows so many of his identities, but it’s better someone Juno trusts than anyone else. “Are you… are you certain, Miss Rita?”

“I’ve been Boss’ bestie since before his brother died. I’ve seen him through enough of these I’ve lost count. You better bet your butt I’m certain. Rita out!”

The comms beeps sadly as the call disconnects.

Well, that could have gone better. He hopes that Juno will be okay with this.

Peter pulls on the rest of his clothes, covered in Martian sand and colored just slightly wrong to hide the swathes of blood cutting across the forearms and chest. 

When he turns back around, Juno’s eye is open.

“Oh, Juno!” Peter says, a smile already forming on his lips, “I was worried- you did fall quite hard, and your secretary is worried about how- Juno? Juno?”

Juno doesn’t react at all. His eye stares straight ahead and he blinks once, and keeps staring. He doesn’t twitch at all. Doesn’t shift. Just stares. Empty and blank-faced.

“Well,” Peter says, “shit.”

-

It is… disconcertingly easy to lug a bloodstained, catatonic man with only one eye onto public transport in Hyperion City. Perhaps it says something about Juno’s general neighborhood, or maybe it just says something about Mars, but no one gives a second glance to Peter physically hauling Juno onto the bus. Nor does anyone seem to care or notice the whole way to the bus stop, or the short struggle to Juno’s apartment building from the closest bus stop. Brahma was undoubtedly bad, yes, but even it wasn’t nearly as apathetic as Hyperion.

Peter is just glad that the building has an elevator- although it does smell… less than sanitary.

It’s a wonder a city as dysfunctional and dirty as this ever made a lady like Juno Steel, but it does help to explain some of the eccentricities of the dear Detective. Like his intense depression and general willingness to kill himself.

The door to Juno’s apartment bangs open when he gets within ten feet of it, to reveal the short, yet no less intimidating figure of Juno’s legitimately terrifying secretary. She gives a quick glare toward Peter over her novelty glasses with the frames popped out, and then bounces forward to examine Juno. Her eyebrows do something funny when she examines the new patch over his eye and the way his shirt hangs off of him a little too much, but she doesn’t say a word, until after she ushers Peter and his cargo through the door and locks it with all of its deadbolts.

“Alright, Mistah. We’ve got two things to do. But first: questions.”

Peter blinks and tightens his hold on Juno. “Miss Rita, I hardly think this is the time-”

“Then you thought wrong! Did you and the Boss get frisky?”

Peter raises his eyebrows and blinks again, harder. He’d sputter if it wasn’t deeply inelegant. “I hardly see how that’s relevant.”

“You hardly a lot of things, Mistah Glass.”

“It’s less impolite. Quite like not asking someone if they have slept with your employer.”

“Listen, I need to know if Mistah Steel was okay with you seeing him without any clothes on, because he needs to get cleaned off, or he stays like this for a lot longer. We’ve talked about it before, and he’s confirmed that previous consent is fine for when he has an episode. You look like you need a bath too. And Mistah Steel doesn’t do too well with me, specifically, touching him when he’s up in his head.”

“Oh.” Peter says. “Yes, he has given me previous permission.”

“Alright, then this is a lot easier. You take care of Boss, I’ll set out new clothes and make sure he’s got a safety nest going. Then you and me are going to have a talk, Mistah.”

“Alright. You are… deeply intimidating.”

“Aww, thanks Mistah Morales. Now get crackin’!”

-

It’s very intimate, but remarkably unerotic, cleaning Juno off.

Peter sets him gently against the wall and turns the showerhead of Juno’s combination shower and tub on as quickly as he can, using the time the water takes to warm up to strip Juno out of his layers as smoothly as he can, and follow suit. He puts their clothes in a pile that occasionally leaks red dust, where Rita could reach them.

“Come on, Detective. Up we get,” he says, even though Rita had already given him a brief rundown of Juno’s awareness. It feels less like he’s talking to a corpse, this way.

Carefully, before pulling Juno up to his side once again, Peter covers the gauze over his eye with some plastic pieces from the severely depleted first aid kit under the sink. Juno still feels too small against Peter’s side, but he feels right at the same time. Like, once given enough time, he’ll fit like a puzzle piece into the places that Peter is hollow and tender.

He tests the water with one hand and then pulls Juno up and over the lip of the tub with him. Peter stands with his back to the spray first, and closes the curtain so it’s just the two of them beneath the water. A few gentle breaths and the slack weight of Juno in his arms helps ground him and ensure he doesn’t feel overly claustrophobic.

Peter hooks one arm around Juno’s ribs as gently but securely as he can and thoroughly rinses his hand through the water, then scrubs it through Juno’s hair to loosen the dried blood and mud. They likely should have showered the night before, but it wasn’t like they hadn’t become accustomed to ancient dirt and grime in unfortunate places, and Peter wasn’t sure if he would have trusted Juno not to slip and kill himself in the tiny bathroom the hotel had offered. Or to allow Juno out of his sight at all. But that’s the selfish part of Peter talking.

Juno has a truly remarkable quantity of Martian tomb dust in his hair. And everywhere else. Most of it has rubbed off from the travel and… activities, but what does remain is stubborn. Once the most of it has been freed from its messy clumps, Peter adjusts the both of them so Peter leans against the wall and inches Juno under the spray as deliberately as he can.

It doesn’t make Peter feel quite right, but he slides Juno’s eyelid closed to keep the dirtied water from getting into it. It feels a little bit too close to dealing with a corpse, except for the fact that Juno’s skin is still warm against his. The worst of the dirt washes out in rivers of red over Peter’s hands.

There’s something very raw about this. About Juno, stuck in his own head, relying on him to free the lady from the last physical pieces of their two weeks of living hell. About wiping the dirt out from the hollows between Juno’s ribs with the same care he’s used to swipe priceless jewelry. Resting his forehead against Juno’s and allowing the tears he couldn’t let fall the night before mingle with the clear water sluicing from his hair.

It’s hard to see him like this, so close to the time he’d been silent on the other side of that fucking door. So quiet and still, with his eyes closed and his heartbeat drowned out under the water. But it’s a privilege as well. The most precious thing Peter’s ever had, much less been entrusted with. To have this vulnerability shared with him. To have this fragile but unimaginably strong creature held against his chest, and to be able to shed away every last shred of a mask he has ever had.

There’s an intimacy in that exposure. In that trust. In the sheer nakedness of the both of them before the other. In the way that it is so delightfully uncomfortable to be known by another. The trust given by Juno and the care given in turn.

Peter Nureyev would do anything to keep Juno Steel in his arms.

But it has been a very, very long two weeks for Peter as well, and his arms and legs still ache from Miasma’s punishments. It would not only be very bad, but also incredibly embarrassing if he dropped Juno because he lost his grip.

So Peter carefully lifts Juno out of the shower to lean against the side of the tub on the bath mat, giving his arms a quick rest and allowing him to quickly scrub some shampoo into his own hair and wash himself off with more efficiency than he could hope to give a catatonic Juno.

He sets the plug into the tub and raises the temperature of the water slightly. While he waits for the bathtub to fill, Peter joins Juno on the floor and tucks his head into the curve of Juno’s neck. In the steam of the bathroom, everything is a little more dreamlike than before. Rita snuck in once the curtain was closed, evidently, because the dirty clothes are gone and replaced with a small pile of faded, soft fabric that Peter knows will have years of Juno Steel worn into the stitches.

Peter lifts one hand up and tests the water, then raises the temperature a little more and goes back to his sentinel’s position, staring at the door, protecting Juno’s neck, for as long as he can before turning off the tap and pulling Juno up in bridal style, laying him back into the tub and grabbing a hand towel to rest underneath his neck as he goes.

He… sings. While he rubs the shampoo through Juno’s hair, while he uses another hand towel to take off the rest of the dirt and grime and sweat and everything else, while he turns Juno around and turns on the showerhead once more to take the shampoo out. Songs he’s heard on radio stations recently, or many years ago. Soft, crooning numbers he’s had to perform under the identity of an entertainer. The song that played the day he killed Mag. He hums when he forgets the words, and makes a game of counting off the various aches he can feel surfacing on his body now that he’s awake and adrenaline-free.

And after, when he’s drained the tub and wrapped Juno up in all of the towels he could locate, Peter digs back into that first aid kit and takes off Juno’s eye patch, using the last clean hand towel to dab away the dried blood and residual dirt. He replaces the gauze freshly and adds a quick kiss over it, for good measure, even though Juno’s other eye remains blank and unseeing.

Peter stands up quickly, and is swiftly reminded that he has not gotten quite a lot of nutrients in quite a while as his head spins. The pre-packaged pastries swiped from the hotel supply closet kept the both of them alive after arriving at the hotel, but it was hardly nutritious, and the slight spinning sensation reminds him of that fact.

The clothes are easy enough to sort out. Two soft pairs of sweatpants and oversized shirts with two different corporate slogans half-chipped away on the front. Juno’s set is perfectly sized for a lazy afternoon, or in this case, a state of catatonia brought on by intense mental strain. Peter’s shirt hangs off of one shoulder, no matter how he adjusts it, however, and the sweatpants need to be drawn fairly well closed in order to fit, and they don’t go particularly far down his legs. Juno, although currently thinner than normal, is naturally stocky and more compact, likely originating from his early life’s reliance on fighting for survival, while Peter has about the same size ratio as a lampost, and is nearly as tall as one, from a childhood made on stealth and genetics that made him feel more like a giraffe than anything else.

Carrying Juno back out of the bathroom pulls on something uncomfortable in his shoulder, but he can afford to deal with it later. 

Rita bursts out of the kitchen the second Peter eases the bathroom door back open, and ferries him toward the bedroom, which seems to have acquired every single blanket in a mile radius. “Get Boss on up there and cuddle,” Rita orders, in the no-nonsense way she has ever since he called her comms. “He gets through it easier with physical contact, and I can’t do it or things get a lot worse for him. If ya leave him alone while I’m in the kitchen, I’ll destroy you and everything you’ve ever loved!”

Peter chuckles nervously and sets Juno down, hiding the wince he wants to make as his shoulder does something new and interesting with its muscles. “Given that I love our dear Detective, you may wish to rephrase that,” he says, and doesn’t let his gaze meet Rita or his voice tremble when he admits it. Instead, he crosses in front of her, staring straight ahead, and levers himself onto the bed, ignoring the way the more abused portions of his musculature make their displeasure quite vividly known.

Who would have thought that electrocution, acute dehydration, fighting a hyper-fast non-human with knives, spending a night on a hotel bed, and kneeling on a bathroom floor would make his body revolt.

Rita makes a noise that starts as a half-hearted growl and fluctuates through it into a high-pitched squeal. “Aww! That’s so romantic! I still hate you for kidnapping Mistah Steel, but I hate you a little less right now!”

Peter smiles and shifts to fit his arm more comfortably around Juno’s midriff, tangling one of his legs with Juno’s. “To be fair, the kidnapping the first time was-” He turns slightly too wrong and lands on his elbow at the precisely wrong angle, unable to stop the small hiss of pain- “completely voluntary on the Detective’s part. The second kidnapping included the both of us, and I was being held at gunpoint at the time.”

Rita narrows her eyes, but the tension in her shoulders eases some. “I’m gonna ask you so many questions, Mistah Whoever-You-Are, but I gotta make sure I don’t mess up the soup. The painkillers are in the top drawer. Take two.” She raises her finger threateningly before Peter can even think to interrupt. “Don’t even try to tell me you ain’t hurt! You’re good, but you’re not good enough to fool Rita! Besides, I’ve got enough practice with Mistah Steel hiding where he’s hurting, and you ain’t anywhere _near_ his level of self-endangerment yet!” Her eyes narrow even more, but she bounces on the balls of her feet. “Keep it that way! Rita out!” She sprints out the door and there’s a great deal of clattering pots and pans from the kitchen.

Peter shifts back, his hand still holding onto Juno as he locates the pill bottle and takes two, as Rita ordered. He’s not an idiot. He’s very much aware that he’s currently in her good graces, and would hate to endanger that by failing to follow her instructions.

“Well, Juno,” Peter says pleasantly, once he’s dry-swallowed the pills and reattached himself to Juno’s side, pulling one of the many copious blankets over the both of them, “we’ve come this far, hmm? Let’s just hope your secretary isn’t the one that takes me down.”

-

It doesn’t take too much for Rita to start trusting Glass, or whatever name he’s going by these days.

He cares about Boss. He’s bad at hiding it, and keeping it down, and not looking like he’d walk to the edges of the known universe and back just to see Mistah Steel smiling when he walked through the door again. She’s seen a lot of stream stars and starlets stare longingly into the eyes of their new love interest, but Glass blows them all out of the water. And Mistah Steel isn’t even awake to see it.

If she’s honest with herself, she trusted him about when he wanted to make sure he had permission from Boss before moving him and meant it. Even more when he trusted her to protect Mistah Steel better than he could alone and took Boss back to his apartment. It at least got him off of her hitlist.

But Rita has had a lot of questions, and Glass has been real forthcoming with all of his answers. She’s asked him about everything that Mistah Steel has been through in the two weeks he’s been gone, and he gave her as much as he felt he morally could, without getting Juno’s permission to share some of the messier sections.

She’s also gotten some of Glass’ other exploits out of him. Hell, by the time Glass moved from just laying next to Mistah Steel to instead wriggle behind him and wrap an arm around his waist, he was even telling some of them without her prompting. He laughed at her jokes. He listened to her rants about her streams and responded with strange trivia about twenty-fourth century Saturnian politics and detailed heists.

He learns quickly, too, but it’s not too much of a surprise. Keeping a non-lucid Juno Steel alive is a lot easier than making sure a conscious Juno Steel doesn’t die, and Glass has so far succeeded on that front. It mostly consists of working out how to feed him soup and keep him clean and warm.

(“I’ve gotten very used to hurting and conning and killing,” Glass had admitted quietly, somewhere around the twenty hour mark, right before he fell asleep. “I have to say, it’s much nicer to keep someone alive and safe.”

“A lot harder, though,” Rita had responded, not letting the new conversation topic distract her from her documentation of everything that Glass had mentioned about what happened Mistah Steel over the past two weeks in a secure file. “It’s real easy to break something, but it’s a lot more difficult to fix it. Takes only a couple seconds to kill somebody with one of those knives of yours, but it takes a long time to heal up from a stab wound.”

“He’s worth every second.”

Rita had stayed until Glass was snoring into the top of Boss’ skull, and then she had packed up her stuff and left the both of them to it.

She’d come in to check on them a few hours later, after hearing a weird gasping noise from the room, like a choked off scream. She found Glass curled into an aggressively tight ball on the bed next to Mistah Steel, his head resting against his lady’s neck and Boss’ hand pressed against his lips. She’d closed the door and went back to her makeshift bed on the couch as quietly as she could. She wasn’t quite sure if he’d actually been crying or if it was a trick of the light, but she decided it was best to give him some space.)

It’s a rough time for Glass, but he’s putting his all into getting Boss back on his feet and he’s making sure to take some time to type something on his comms that’s either a diary or poetry, from what Rita checked to make absolutely sure he wasn’t betraying Mistah Steel.

It’s real sappy. A half-decent coping mechanism, though.

It’s a little like dealing with two Mistah Steels, for all that Glass takes care of himself. He doesn’t take the painkillers unless Rita reminds him, and even then he looks vaguely guilty for taking a part of Boss’ stuff. Luckily, he does take care of his own injuries once he’s done checking over Mistah Steel, but he’s thrifty when it comes to the contents of the first aid kit. He gets the same hunted, haunted look that Boss does sometimes, when his fingers skim over near-empty containers of bandages, as though he’s running the numbers on how long it’ll take for them to run out.

The only thing he’s asked from her that wasn’t related to Mistah Steel was to pick up a duffel bag in a storage facility, and even that was just to get a bottle of cologne out from one of the pockets. 

So, yes, Rita trusts Glass. If only because he loves Mistah Steel too much to hurt him purposefully, and he knows Boss cares about her.

Given everything she’s learned about what Mistah Steel’s been through since his voluntary kidnapping, and the fact that he hasn’t had a break episode since- huh, before Glass came in to commit a crime and seduce Boss, Rita’s not overly surprised that they’re hitting the forty-eight hour mark and Boss is still out of it. But Glass hasn’t seen Mistah Steel like this before, and he’s had a lot of death scares with Boss the past couple of days and a hard couple weeks too.

“Ya don’t need to always stay in contact, Mistah Glass,” Rita says as she watches Glass try to eat one of the sandwiches she made one-handed. She takes a sip of tea every time a piece of lettuce falls on the towel over his lap.

“I’m aware,” Glass replies, before narrowly catching a piece of cloned sandwich meat with his teeth. His other hand is hooked through Boss’ elbow, like he’d be escorting Mistah Steel to a gala. He does that thing he always does before he shares something he might think is overly personal, where he ducks his head and hikes up one shoulder slightly. “I’ll admit that I haven’t exactly had the most extensive history with genuine friendly touch. Much less with someone I,” he pauses and brings one long leg up as though it’ll protect him from her knowledge of him, “care about. Love.”

“You do got a pretty full flight manifesto. Not a lot of room to pick up sweethearts. Ya leave before anyone can get close, huh?”

“Oh, no. I’ve had my fair share of honeypot missions. I’ve led people on for months, before. I can even get people convinced that they love me so it’s easier for the heist. They get plenty close, but nothing about them sticks. I’m not exactly a stranger to human contact or relationships. Unfortunately, they always sour at the end and leave me with unfortunate souvenirs half of the time. But Juno…” he struggles with his words for a while. The sandwich is abandoned in his hand as he attempts to locate the phrasing. “Juno is more genuine than anyone else I’ve ever known. He has his broken parts, and he doesn’t try to hide them. He’s so earnest that it almost hurts. He doesn’t wear a mask. He has his heart on his sleeve, and it’s been through a lot and I just-” Glass cuts off and looks down again, that shoulder drawing back up.

“Ya want to help him put it back together,” Rita says. It’s hard not to squeal over how cute they are. She can’t wait for Boss to wake up so she can interrogate him too. This is just like her streams, except somehow it’s ten times more heart-wrenching. “Ya see Boss over here snapping at everybody like a dog with a broken leg, and ya want to help him heal.”

Glass nods. “I want to run away with him and I want to stay right here with him and I want to create and destroy galaxies with him.” He smiles at that, small and shy as if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. “I’ve spent a lot of my life looking for something to put my faith in. Something I could trust and admire and adore. I stopped trying to look for it in people or deities a while back. I started looking for it in careers and identities and stolen goods and adrenaline. But,” he hesitates again, and it looks like he’s going to tuck his head further down, but he raises it instead, “I could worship Juno Steel. I honestly think I already have.” His eyes are certain, if slightly misty.

Rita smiles, and has to suppress the manic giggles that want to come out. This is better than a stream!

But it could get a lot more complicated.

Rita’s smile fades and she looks back at Boss, whose eye is closed as he goes through another sporadic unconscious phase. “Then you’re gonna have to pin him down and make sure he knows, because Mistah Steel is very good at ruining things for himself.” She hops off of her stool at the foot of the bed and places her mug on it so she can start gesticulating. “Boss loves easy. But he gets betrayed by his heart more often than not, ya get me?”

Glass nods hesitantly, shifting a little closer to Boss.

“Mistah Steel’s gotten used to the things he loves hurting him, leaving him, and making him cry. He’s got a nasty habit of doing all of those things preemptively to the people he loves before they can do it to him without provocation. He prefers the guilt and blame to not knowing the answer to the mystery of why they did it to him. You got a habit of leaving, Mistah Glass. He might just try to fly away before you can.”

Glass shuts his eyes for a second, pained in a way that has nothing to do with the nasty bruise on his shoulder. “You seem to have escaped that particular pitfall. Any tips?”

Rita smiles and shakes her head, grabbing her tea again and taking a sip to calm down. “I got lucky, and I got stubborn. He kept sending me away and I kept coming back. He would say mean things and I’d give him passive-aggressive stickers. He’d have an episode,” she gestures with her mug to Boss, “and I’d be there to keep him alive. He’s an open wound, Mistah Glass. You gotta get close enough that he heals over ya, and then he never lets you go.”

Glass grimaces. “Charming.” He stares down at the last few bites of his sandwich with immense distaste, before eating them anyway.

(How many times has Rita seen Mistah Steel do that exact same thing? The habit spawned from the sort of thriftiness born of need, of watching eyes and hungry stomachs. Of dirty streets and bloodstained alleyways.)

“No one ever said love was pretty or easy, Mistah Glass. Or at least not the staying in it part. I can give ya a laundry list of streams that say that almost word-for-word.” Rita takes another sip of tea, which has, admittedly, gone colder than she’d like. “There’s no catch-all for Boss, but I’ve seen Mistah Steel through a lot of the worst times of his life, and you’re not off to a bad start. Ya gotta use actions. Words are nice, and Mistah Steel likes using ‘em too, but he knows too many fast-talkers for them to hold a lot of weight on their own. Too much lying to make most confessions stick. Too many ‘I love you’s that didn’t stay that way.”

Glass hesitates where he sits, as though afraid to say something, before grabbing his own wrist with his now free hand and using the grip to tug himself closer to Boss. “I took the liberty of researching Juno before our first escapade. His mother was an actress and then a writer, was she not? Enjoyed a lot of words. Especially fiction.”

Rita makes the face she always does whenever Sarah Steel is mentioned and holds her tea with both hands. “Bingo, Mistah Glass.”

Glass’ hand twitches toward his comms, almost as though he wants to open up his diary/poetry hybrid and delete it. It’s sweet. Besides, Mistah Glass is a better writer than Sarah Steel was.

“You’ve got a headstart and a half, Mistah Glass,” Rita interrupts before Glass can actually follow through. “Ya saved him from the desert, ya put your trust in him, and you’re still here for him even though he’s out of it. Actions. Now ya just gotta follow through and make sure he knows what it means.”

Glass nods, and then stares down at the bedspread with his eyes briefly unfocused, before snapping his gaze back up to Rita and, for the first non-essential time he has since he set Mistah Steel down on the bed, removing his touch entirely from Boss. His fingertips linger for a moment, but he breaks it like a spiderweb clinging the two of them together. His hands come to clasp together with an air of uncertainty over his legs. “I, uh… I told him that I was falling in love with him. While I was falling asleep. And when I woke up he was half-dressed and completely unconscious on the floor.”

“Not the most comfortin’ thing to wake up to, huh?”

“Not the worst encounter I’ve had waking up in a hotel bed in recent times. Murder attempt ranks slightly above it. But back to the subject matter. Do you think…?”

“That Mistah Steel was about to make a decision he’d regret the second he made it? Yeah. Probably. He cared enough about you that he was able to break around you. He’d try to self-sabotage as much as he could, Mistah Glass.”

Glass sighs and wrings his hand once, before reaching over to the side and picking up Juno’s hand once more, pressing it quickly to his lips and then just keeping it close. His other hand bunches up the blankets closest to him. His head ducks down as far as it can, and that shoulder hikes up as high as it can go. His legs bunch up close too, until all six odd feet of him is tucked into the smallest space it can occupy.

“Ya got somethin’ to say, Mistah Glass?” Rita says, setting her tea on the floor and shimmying back up onto the stool to stay at eye level.

He mutters something, too quiet to hear.

“Ya might wanna speak up there.”

“Peter Nureyev.”

Rita tilts her head and frowns, “The Brahman freedom fighter?”

“Ah. You’re… well informed.” Glass scrubs the blanket between his fingers. “Yes, technically. But more than that, it’s my… it’s my real name. My first name.”

Rita blinks. And then hops down to pick up her tea and slug it back.

“Alright,” Rita announces, “it’s nice to meet you, Mistah… Peter. Peter. Now Rita is going to sit in the kitchen, make some more tea, and maybe scream into the couch cushions a little bit.”

Peter makes a slight face at that. “Maybe just stick with the last name? Everyone who’s ever called me Peter has wanted to be my parental figure.”

Rita taps her fingers in one rolling wave against the side of her mug. “You’ve got one distinctive last name, Mistah, and I’ve got about the same filter that the HCPD uses on their coffee machines. They don’t got the budget for any! So you’re Petey now. No take-backsies! You chose this! Maybe that makes me your cool aunt or something.”

And then, before Rita can combust, she exits in a whirlwind out of the door and makes a beeline for those couch cushions.

The drama! The romance! The heartbreak so narrowly averted! The thief and the detective! The freedom fighter and the disillusioned ex-cop! Ugh, she could make a hundred screenplays out of this! Or even a podcast!

Yeah, Rita trusts Peter Nureyev. But before she can tell him that much, she needs to have some Rita Time. And that involves spiking her tea and screeching into a soft surface.

-

Juno wakes slowly. In levels, maybe, except even that doesn’t sound quite right.

He hears first. The muted rumbles and whispers of one of Rita’s streams playing from the other room. The low buzz of a failing bulb. The slow drum of a heartbeat beneath his ear. The steady rhythm of breathing. The far off, distant noises of Hyperion that are more familiar to him than the scars on his skin.

Touch comes next, dizzying on the heels of this new symphony. A sweatpants waistband digging gently against his hip bones. A worn shirt loosely enveloping him. A cocoon of blankets. A person’s arms around his middle. A person’s legs bracketing him. A soft, solid object pressed against his left cheek.

He floats in the haze of that, for a while. Drowsily drowning in the consistency held close and the distant change that goads him to awaken further.

Ugh. He has a nasty habit of overcomplicating his internal monologue when he gets tired.

Then, like someone flipped a switch, smell and taste come awake simultaneously. Chicken soup. Nutrient powder. Cotton. Blood. Laundry detergent. Rita’s nail polish. Nureyev’s cologne.

Juno’s head feels… weird. Floaty and distant. Uncertain and scraped raw. The vague echoes of screaming and pain follow him out, but they aren’t as loud as he’d expect them to be. They don’t make him feel as hollowed out as normal. They feel as far off as that car, honking a couple blocks down.

For the first time in… maybe ever, Juno Steel wakes up after an episode feeling real.

 _Probably a dream,_ he decides. _Why would Nureyev still be here? Why would I feel like this if I’m not just clinging onto old memories?_

But, hey. Before he has to open his eyes, wake up, and come face to face with the fact that Nureyev has realized what a goddamn burden he is and skipped town, he can indulge in this for a second.

He keeps his eyes closed and turns a little, burrowing his head further into the person holding him, into that ghost of Nureyev’s cologne.

He wills this dream to last as long as it can.

“Juno?” Nureyev says, in a tone so soft and reverent and cautious that it makes Juno feel like an artifact in a museum exhibit, holy and just waiting to be stolen away into the night by those long fingers and sharp teeth.

Juno groans out something that could be an answer, and tries to shift further into that heartbeat, into that breath, into that skin and bone and cologne. Into the illusion of safety before him.

Then, Nureyev laughs. It peals through the air, sharp and surprised and slightly wet, and it rumbles against Juno’s chest. Without thinking, Juno opens his eyes.

Or, eye, rather. He almost forgot about that part, somehow.

And- Nureyev is there, larger than life and this city and this planet and the whole damn universe, in an oversized shirt that hangs off of one shoulder and dips below his sharp collarbones. His teeth gleam sharply as he smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the corners, shining with dampness as he stares down at Juno as though he’s the most precious thing this side of the sun.

“Hi,” Juno says dumbly, because in this moment, in the light of a Martian afternoon, without any makeup, in the shirt that Juno found in a dumpster once, Peter Nureyev is the most gorgeous he has ever been. And that’s a damn high bar to clear.

“Hi,” Nureyev says back.

-

Later, they’ll talk it out. It’ll be messy and uncomfortable and Rita will need to sit in the corner and mediate when Juno starts to fall back into old patterns and Nureyev starts putting up old masks. They’ll talk, though. Maybe even work something out. Something a lot better than a half-empty hotel bed and a bouquet of dahlias and roses.

But now, fifty-five hours after Juno Steel felt safe enough to break apart, Peter Nureyev is there to help him stay together and fill in the cracks.

Maybe the world gets a little bigger. Maybe it gets a little meaner.

But right here, in this minuscule section of the universe, there’s a private eye and a thief wrapped around each other, and they don’t give a damn how big and mean the world will get, so long as they can face it together.

**Author's Note:**

> Just let them be happy. Please. Please let them be happy.
> 
> This was aggressively self-indulgent, in case you didn't notice. This quarantine has got me craving some good old fashioned cuddling.
> 
> Visit me on [tumblr!](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/) Drop some comments or kudos!


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